Retirement Planning Investment Information Overload!

When you seek retirement planning investment information, you are
immediately hit by a deluge of confusing and contradicting 'noise', to
put it kindly.

If I could be of any help to you, the best I can do is to bring some order to the confusion.

There
are roughly three stages during your retirement planning lifetime and
at each stage you would need different investment information.

The early years

You should start investing for your
retirement right from the day you receive your first paycheck. But
during these early years there's no urgency and very few people actually
try to understand the retirement plans available.

There are
several tax advantaged deferred-compensation retirement investment plans
available that permit you as an employee to have a portion of your
salary deducted from your paycheck and contributed to a retirement
investment account. Your employer may also make contributions to this
account.

Several of these specific tax advantaged
deferred-compensation retirement plans are discussed on this Web site.
Do study these plans for informed decisions on your retirement planning
investments.

Running-out-of-time years

This is
the stage when you realize that your provision for retirement is
hopelessly inadequate. This stage hit me personally at age 50.

This
is also the stage where you typically earn an above average income. You
might be in a senior or management position with little free time on
your hands.

It is at this stage that you need to do some serious
retirement planning. The emphasis is on Saving. Whether the savings are
tax advantaged or not.

You need to swell your retirement account
to a value at retirement that would enable you to live on the annual
earnings of your retirement account without drawing against your
principle if possible.

How your retirement account is invested is
not going to solve your problem. The smart thing is to diversify your
investment spread and to remain cautious and conservative rather than
aggressive.

But you'll have to investigate the possibilities for
earning multiple income streams. A second job, some consulting, monetize
your hobby, or consider a business on the Internet run from home.

You
can also consider scaling down your lifestyle. It is surprising how
much you can contribute to your retirement account out of direct savings
by merely moderating your lifestyle. By stopping excessive consumption.
My wife and I have done that and it ended up to be the biggest
contributor to our retirement savings.

You can in many cases
postpone your retirement. If you like your job, if you are healthy, and
if your employer is willing you can postpone retirement indefinitely. An
uncle of mine finally retired at age 75!

The retirement years

At
this stage retirement planning investment information should not be an
issue anymore. You have a retirement plan and structure in place. You
have an experienced and qualified advisor.

This is not the time to
invest in risky ventures. If it is too good to be true, don't invest.
Even if your advisor thinks you should.